Chainani is the author of a New York Times bestselling young adult novel, The School for Good and Evil, which is the first in a trilogy and is being turned into a movie by Universal Pictures. We talked about his topsy-turvy path to novel writing and Hollywood.

William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. To celebrate his 450th birthday this month, we asked seven scholars and novelists what writers can learn from reading the Bard.

Anita Shreve wrote nine drafts of her latest novel, Stella Bain, before it was published. With persistence and passion, she saw the book through to its end, an approach that has paid off throughout her 24 years as a novelist. Time and again, her novels demonstrate how dynamic characters and complex plots can bridge the gap between mainstream and literary.